First Day of Work

In China, a training center, for those that are unfamiliar with the term, is an after-school school that teaches children English, or whatever else, but those don’t matter as I’m an English teacher. So, I’m only concerned with the English language training centers. These centers focus more on communication, and, usually, with more of an emphasis on reading and writing than the children’s regular school might.

Today, I am finally going to where I’m going to work for at least the semester, if not the whole 18 months of my contract. I was warned that ut is not really near a metro station.

I make it to my school, a training center, for my first day of work with a little help from my employer. I was told to meet at a metro station exit, the same as most of the meeting places that weren’t the office. As I was wondering if my employer would show up, I messaged saying that I was there and was told that they are sending a Didi, basically a Chinese Uber but with the option to get a regular taxi, to take us to the training center.

The taxi drops us off in the middle of a side street. After looking left and right, there was no school in sight! I was about to message my employer again for some more directions when someone on a bicycle recognized me. I guess a lost foreigner in the middle if the street isn’t that hard to assume is looking for the near by language school. They kindly pointed me in the right direction and after a bit of walking, I finally managed to arrive at work for the first time.

First, I meet some of the other teachers and get a tour of the building. It’s not that big and the hallway is a circle. Finally, somewhere I can’t get lost!

Since I was told to be there an hour and a half before I normally would have to be, only a few teachers are there. Instead, they use this time to tell me a bit more about how the classes are arranged, the different levels and class times.

Once the other foreign English teachers arrive, they help me order food, because, apparently, one of the first things they do when they get to work at 3pm is eat dinner. There are a couple apps to use (I don’t know their names, I think of them as the blue one and the yellow one), and after some iOS/Android issues, I have one working in my WeChat. One of the Chinese teachers was kind enough to help with some of the typing and added in the address for the school and my home address, which I still don’t know.

When the delivery driver is there they call and leave the food on a little table outside. To me, it’s a very odd way to start the working day, but it seems to work for them. After a few days, I’m sure I’ll get used to it and understand the habit a bit more.

After dinner, I continued to chat with the other foreigners about working here, classes, students, and tacos (yum!), until they had to prep for their classes, some of which I would get to watch later so that I could see what a normal class was supposed to be like and how my classes might go in the future when I get used to teaching here.

I watched one of the younger ones’ class and it was almost pure chaos. But, that’s the way the teacher runs the class and allows the students to run fairly free. The kids were yelling and screaming, and having a really fun time while also learning a lot and practicing their skills. I got a headache.

Then, it was on to an older students’ class where they were all sitting calmly, writing notes in English, and quietly learning some new vocabulary words from a powerpoint and calmly taking turns making some good sentences with the new words. It was a completely different world! Why can’t I have nice older students like these?

Finally, it was back into the chaos to watch another younger students’ class. This time they were learning phonics. So, they were a little quieter, but not all that much.

I left for the day eager to start teaching my own classes tomorrow and with a bunch of new ideas.

And a fairly large headache.